STEVE MARRIOTT
''LEND US A QUID
JULY 13 2010
140:50
DISC ONE
1/Think/3:47
2/Shake
Sam Cooke/2:43
3/Charlene
Steve Marriott/4:13
4/High and Happy
Steve Marriott/2:36
5/Star in My Life
Steve Marriott/2:42
6/Snakes and Ladders
Steve Marriott/3:57
7/Lend Us a Quid
Steve Marriott/3:54
8/Midnight of My Life
Steve Marriott/4:02
9/Be My Baby
Jeff Barry / Ellie Greenwich / Phil Spector/2:36
10/Hambone
Steve Marriott/2:45
11/Rain
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/5:52
12/Cocaine
Steve Marriott/3:41
13/To Ramona
Bob Dylan/3:28
14/Think [Version 2]/3:35
15/Anyhow, I Love You [Rehearsal Take 1]/8:04
16/Anyhow, I Love You [Rehearsal Take 2]/8:32
DISC TWO
1/Whatcha Gonna Do About It/6:06
2/Fool for a Pretty Face
Steve Marriott/7:12
3/Hallelujah I Love Her So
Ray Charles/5:46
4/Walking the Dog
Rufus Thomas/4:10
5/Five Long Years/14:34
6/The Fixer
Steve Marriott/7:35
7/Drum Solo/5:12
8/Thirty Days in the Hole
Steve Marriott/9:39
9/I Don't Need No Doctor
Nick Ashford / Valerie Simpson/14:09
REVIEW
by Mark Deming
In 1975, Humble Pie had broken up (at least for a while) and Steve Marriott decided it was time to make a solo album; with that in mind, he retreated to the recording studio he'd built on his estate and invited some friends to help him lay down some tracks, including Boz Burrell, Ian Wallace, Joe Brown, Jimmy McCullough, and Clem Clempson. The material Marriott and his pals came up was tough, hard rock with a funky edge, especially when they dove into covers of James Brown's "Think" and Sam Cooke's "Shake." These sessions were never released, and a different, more polished set of material was released as Marriott's first solo album (titled, in a burst of inspiration, Marriott), but Wapping Wharf, a label affiliated with a Small Faces fanzine, have finally given the material an authorized release as Lend Us a Quid. Lend Us a Quid has an admirably rough and tumble sound that suits Marriott's voice well, and his hard-driven, bluesy roar is shown to better advantage on this material than much of his later work with the reunited Humble Pie or as a solo act. However, a lot of these tracks sound like demos rather than finished tracks, and while the slightly chaotic feel is right up Marriott's alley, the clanky drum machines that set the tempo on some tunes really should be lower in the mix, the oddball audio effects are sometimes intrusive, and the playing, while generally quite good, sounds as if the musicians were still working the kinks out of the material. It doesn't help that most of these tracks were clearly sourced from tapes a few generations away from the original masters, and the tinny, smeary sound of a few tracks suggest they were taken from old cassettes. And the final selections, two takes of Marriott and a guitarist struggling through "Anyhow, I Love You," are a chore for anyone except the most devoted fan. The bonus disc, which captures a Humble Pie gig from 1983, is raucous and energetic but finds Marriott sounding more than a little drunk and pretty obnoxious between tunes, even by his Bad Boy standards. Judging from what's here, Lend Us a Quid could have been a much stronger and more interesting album than Marriott, but these tapes needed some work, and in this release, the flaws are every bit as obvious as the strengths; this is for Marriott completists only.
BIOGRAPHY
by Jason Ankeny
The frontman for British hitmakers the Small Faces and Humble Pie, singer/guitarist Steve Marriott was born January 30, 1947 in London; a successful child actor, he played the role of the Artful Dodger in the musical Oliver! as a teen, but by the mid-'60s, he was working in a local music shop. There he met bassist Ronnie Lane, agreeing to jam with his band the Pioneers; Marriott soon joined the group full-time and, after adopting a sound influenced by American R&B and a look inspired by Mod fashions, they rechristened themselves the Small Faces. Though best-known in the U.S. for their hit "Itchycoo Park," at home, the Small Faces enjoyed much greater success, reeling off a series of smashes including "All or Nothing," "My Mind's Eye," and "Lazy Sunday" as well as the 1968 classic LP Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. The chart popularity of "Lazy Sunday" rankled Marriott, however -- he'd recorded the song as a joke and it was released despite his objections -- and when the more thoughtful "The Universal" failed to crack the Top 20, his dissatisfaction only increased.
Marriott's tenure with the Small Faces ended after he stalked offstage during a New Year's Day 1969 performance; he soon recruited ex-Herd guitarist Peter Frampton to form the hard rock combo Humble Pie, and after months of woodshedding at Marriott's Essex cottage, the group issued its debut single, "Natural Born Boogie," cracking the U.K. Top Five. The LP As Safe as Yesterday Is followed, but again American success eluded Marriott until the release of the 1971 Humble Pie live album Performance: Rockin' the Fillmore, which went gold. Although Frampton left the band soon after, 1972's Smokin' was a smash, reaching the U.S. Top Ten; subsequent efforts failed to achieve the same heights, however, and Humble Pie disbanded in 1975. After the release of the solo Marriott, in 1976, he joined in a Small Faces reunion, then four years later re-formed Humble Pie with original drummer Jerry Shirley; after two LPs, the group again dissolved. Marriott spent the better part of the decade in seclusion, but was planning to reunite with Frampton when he lost his life in a house fire on April 20, 1991.
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